That’s how I sold my insomnia to myself, jokily, which was a step forward, or rather back to the ironist I used to be. But what had been waking me early for several weeks before Badingley wasn’t a generalised midlife crisis but something quite specific. I lay brooding about it that morning, after dreaming of it half the night. Ollie’s tumour and the reckless bet I’d made were bad enough. But it was school, and an episode just before the summer holidays, that had me sweating under the eaves.
Few teachers enjoy playground duty. And my mood was not the best that Tuesday lunchtime because Mrs Wilkinson, our dyslexia specialist, had spent so long discussing one of my pupils with me it left no time even for a sandwich. Outside the kids divided in the usual gendered fashion, the girls colluding in quiet clumps close to the building, the boys running wildly at the fringes. As I stood unnoticed by the boiler room, I heard some girls from Year Three singing and clapping hands. I recognised the tune from childhood. But the words and gestures were new.
We are the Derby girls (clap hands)
We wear our hair in curls (pat hair)
We don’t wear dungarees (rub thighs)
We show our sexy knees (touch knees)
The cocky boy next door (pat crotch)
He got me on the floor (touch ground)
I gave him 50p (slap hands)
To give it all to me (thrust crotch)
And now I’ve got this brat (rock arms)
In a high-rise council flat (reach up)
We drink and smoke and shag (wiggle hips)
We are the Derby slags (clap hands)
My first impulse was to intervene and discipline them. But did the girls — seven- and eight-year-olds — understand what they were singing? I’m not used to younger kids; it’s the tough nuts, the ten- and eleven-year-olds, I specialise in. And these girls could have learned the song by rote, just as I used to learn carols ('Lo he abhors not the virgin’s womb'), uncomprehendingly. Best let it go. If I raised it with our head teacher, Mrs Baynes, she would take no action. I left them to it and walked away.
Even if I’d not been bad-tempered, I would have dealt with Campbell Foster in the same way. I’ve never taught Campbell
– normally I would have had him in Year Five but that year I’d been switched to Year Six as an experiment before switching back again. I’d been aware of him, though. You couldn’t not be. You only had to attend Assembly, for which he’d be late or in which he’d be noisy or from which he’d be escorted and made to stand in the corridor. Some kids are trouble for just a term or two. Campbell had been trouble since nursery school
– trouble enough for any normal head to have excluded him by now. But Mrs Baynes believed in sticking with kids and ‘building their self-esteem'. From what I knew of Campbell, his self-esteem didn’t need building up but stamping down. Perhaps if I’d had him, I could have knocked him into shape
– not because I’m a better teacher than my colleagues but because I’m a man, and kids like Campbell lack positive male role models.
The thought struck me again that lunchtime, when I spotted him among a crowd of boys in the basketball cage. ‘Among’ is misleading: he was the ringleader, having purloined a coat from the back of a boy in Year Two — or so I deduced from the boy’s pathetic efforts to snatch it back. Campbell and friends stood in a circle, tossing the coat from hand to hand. Every so often it would be dropped and lie on the ground until the Year Two boy made a grab for it, at which point it would be retrieved. The boy was persistent, I’ll give him that. For a moment he was even laughing. But then the coat fell at Campbell’s feet. The boy snatched a sleeve with one hand and grabbed Campbell’s leg with the other. As he did so, Campbell yanked the coat up and kicked out. The boy fell backwards on the concrete, shrieking and wailing.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ I said, striding across.
Silence.
‘Well?’
I helped the boy up from the ground and asked if he was hurting anywhere. He was all right, he said, between sniffs. There was a red zip-mark across his palm, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.
I turned to his persecutors.
‘ Well?’
None of them moved. Most were staring at the ground.
‘Kid fell over and hurt hisself, sir,’ Campbell said.
I insist on the ‘sir', but coming from Campbell the word sounded more disrespectful than if he’d not said it.
‘He didn’t fall over,’ I said, ‘you pushed him, Campbell.’
‘Me, sir?’
‘I saw you do it.’
‘Youse always blaming me, sir.’
‘You’re always the cause of the trouble, Campbell.’
‘S’not fair.’
‘Let Mrs Baynes decide that. You come with me.’
There was a slight pause before he said: ‘I ain’t going nowhere.’
He seemed to think that since he was off to secondary school in September, there would be no comeback.
‘You’re going to see the head this minute,’ I said.
‘No I ain’t.’
I see now that it would have been better for me to send the others inside. Their presence was making Campbell more defiant.
‘Last chance, Campbell. Will you go of your own free will or do I have to drag you?’
‘You can’t touch me.’
You can’t touch me. Something in me snapped when he said it.
‘Right,’ I said, stepping towards him.
You hear of teachers — even primary-school teachers — being slapped, punched or knifed by pupils. But as I clutched at his left arm I felt no fear. His right arm swung round — whether to hit me or, as he later claimed, to protect himself is beside the point. All I know is that we were pushing and pulling, with me trying to pinion his arms while he tried to escape, until I grabbed his left ear between my forefinger and thumb, something a teacher (or was it my father?) once did to me. The move was surprisingly effective. Despite having both his arms and legs free, he immediately wilted.
‘Tough guy, eh?’ I said, breathing heavily as I led him by the ear across the playground. I say ‘led’ but my arm was stretched diagonally forward with him half a stride ahead, his left cheek tilted towards the sky.
‘Let go, sir,’ he said, from the side of his mouth, ‘you’re hurting.’
Tightening my grip, I said, ‘Now you know how it feels, Campbell,’ adding, for good measure, dreadful cliché though it was: ‘Next time pick on someone your own size.’
By this point he was crying, in part because all the other kids in the playground could see how utterly I’d vanquished him. But my grip didn’t slacken till we reached Mrs Baynes’s office.
The door was open. Campbell, finally released, walked in ahead of me, wailing and rubbing his ear.
‘Dear, dear, what’s the matter, Campbell?’ Mrs Baynes said.
I gave her a full account of the incident, Campbell punctuating it with sobs and strangled objections ('S’not right, Miss'), till Mrs Baynes nodded at me and said, ‘Thank you, Mr Goade. Campbell and I will have a quiet chat about this.’
She had her arm round Campbell’s shoulder by then. In her position, I too might have comforted a crying child. But after the report she’d just been given of his rudeness, bullying and defiance, I was offended by her conciliatory gesture.
Conflict upsets me and I felt shaky for the rest of the afternoon. When Mrs Baynes intercepted me on my way out at three thirty ('Do you have a moment?'), I assumed it would be to commend me for having intervened so incisively, or if not commend (teachers don’t expect to be thanked) to reassure me I had her full support.
‘Campbell alleges that you grabbed his ear,’ she began, unreassuringly.
‘I held him by the ear,’ I said. ‘It was the only way to make him cooperate.’
‘The only way?’
‘When I tried to take his arm, he lashed out. I had no choice.’
‘It seems to me you had several. You could have stood your ground till he r
elented. You could have rung the bell early, so everyone went inside. Or you could have come and fetched me.’
‘He’d bullied a smaller boy. And he was challenging my authority. I had to act.’
‘Absolutely. But as you know, physical coercion should be used only in extreme cases.’
‘In my judgement this was extreme,’ I said.
‘We have to be so careful, Ian. His ear did look rather sore.’ She smiled. ‘He can be a trying boy. I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt him. And I don’t want to make an issue of this.’ I sensed there was a ‘but’ coming but she staunched it. ‘You get off home. With any luck it will all be forgotten by tomorrow.’
Em thinks that Mrs Baynes has it in for me and she said so again that evening. It was humiliating enough when Miss Cooper, ten years my junior, got the deputy headship, a post everyone assumed would go to me. But for Mrs Baynes to have said, by way of consolation, ‘I’m sure other schools will have deputy headships you can apply for, Ian,’ rubbed salt in the wound. I have applied for seven deputy headships in recent years and all have gone to teachers with less experience. I know I make a lousy interviewee: too nervous, too intense, too eager to prove my worth. But my probity and my record as a teacher speak for themselves.
I saw no sign of Campbell for the rest of that week. I assumed he was either in school, lying low, or truanting again.
The following Monday Mrs Baynes summoned me to her office during the morning break.
‘Sit down, Ian,’ she said, peering over the rim of her glasses. ‘Campbell Foster’s mother came to see me last Wednesday, very upset. I hoped that once I spoke to her, she would calm down. But she was back again this morning.’ She took the glasses off and dangled them from her right hand. ‘Unfortunately, she refuses to let the matter drop.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘She intends to make an official complaint.’
‘What would that achieve?’
‘She thinks you should be reprimanded,’ she said. ‘At the very least.’
I had brought my coffee with me, in a Derby County mug, and smiled at Mrs Baynes before taking a swig — God, some of the parents at this school, what a hassle for us both. She didn’t smile back.
‘Let me speak to her,’ I said. ‘I’m sure when she hears what happened —’
‘She has heard. From Campbell.’
‘Then Campbell’s lying.’
‘It’s not what Campbell told her. It’s his ear.’
‘I barely touched it.’
She continued to dangle her spectacles.
‘They showed me a doctor’s letter. It speaks of inflammation and temporary loss of hearing.’
‘Nothing I did could have caused that. I’ll call on her after school and explain.’
‘It wouldn’t be in your interests, Ian. She’s very angry.’
‘What should I do then?’
‘For now, there’s nothing you can do. Obviously I’d like to avoid the matter going to the governors, but —’
‘The governors?’
‘That’s the usual procedure, as I’m sure you know: an independent investigation of the incident, followed by a governors’ meeting, and where the teacher is found to be at fault an official reprimand, suspension or even … But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ She slipped the glasses back on. ‘I’ll keep you informed of any developments, Ian.’
Em told me not to worry. That the parents of problem kids always sided with them as a matter of principle. But that with all the officialdom involved in lodging a complaint, few of them saw it through and fewer still succeeded. Em is a fount of good sense and I believed her.
Like Mrs Baynes, she strongly advised me against seeing Campbell’s mother in person. So when I knocked at 44
Wythern Road one night the following week, having prised the address from the school secretary, I knew I was acting rashly. But I have dealt with difficult parents before. What was there to lose?
‘Yeah?’ said a male voice. The face was pale, the body sprouting from the vest also. It threw me for a second. As did the tattoo on his shoulder and the shorts. There’d been no mention of a Mr Foster. Was this the father or stepfather? My confusion must have showed. ‘Yeah?’ he said again, more aggressively.
‘It’s Ian Goade from the school.’
His eyes stared at me through a fog. Then the sun came up. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me.
‘Petal!’ he called over his shoulder, then folded his arms and leaned against the door frame. I’d more sense than to ask could I step inside.
‘I was just passing,’ I said, to break the silence.
‘You wait there,’ he said.
Mrs Foster appeared, tall, attractive, unexpectedly straight-haired. Was Petal her name or an endearment? She seemed more friendly than her partner till he said: ‘It’s that teacher what done Campbell.’
‘Ian Goade, pleased to meet you,’ I said.
‘You’ve a nerve,’ she said.
‘I think if you heard what actually happened —’
‘We know what happened.’
‘— and let me describe the sequence of events.’
‘There’s only one event here,’ she said. ‘You hurt my boy. You, a grown man, and him an eleven-year-old. Think yourself lucky I stopped my husband settling the score.’ Whether her husband was the man standing there wasn’t clear — nor at that moment particularly relevant.
‘Campbell was misbehaving in the playground.’
‘We’re not stupid,’ she said, which she clearly wasn’t, though I was less sure about the partner. ‘We know Campbell can be a handful. But if you can’t control kids without hitting them, you’re not fit to be a teacher.’
‘I didn’t hit him.’
‘There were witnesses.’
‘I’m sorry you’ve been misled.’
‘You’ve only come here to save your skin.’
‘That’s not the reason.’
‘I’ve nothing more to say, mister. We’ll see you in court.’
I wanted to tell her that a disciplinary hearing isn’t like court. That she was wasting her time. That it would be better to settle this between us. But she’d already disappeared inside.
‘You heard,’ said the man in the vest, closing the door. ‘Fuck off.’
Em, exasperated, said I’d made things worse for myself. Campbell’s mother would proceed now whatever. I might even be accused of harassing her. I had better start preparing my defence. ‘If you have one,’ she added.
In bed, later, she apologised ('I’m sure you didn’t intend to be rough with him. You hardly ever lose your temper these days'). But I couldn’t sleep, and went online with my anxieties, and found references to outer-ear trauma, auricular cartilage damage, and the risk that lobular tears and excessive swelling could cause permanent damage to a person’s hearing.
Ridiculous, when all I’d done was hold him firmly.
My colleagues at school were vaguely sympathetic, because they know what Campbell is like. But none had been present at the time and I was too proud to approach the teachers’ union for advice. I knew we were allowed to use ‘reasonable force’ in restraining pupils. But when I consulted the relevant paragraph of the Education Act online, I discovered the following: ‘Deliberate use of physical contact to punish a pupil, cause pain or injury or humiliation is unlawful, regardless of the severity of the pupil’s behaviour or the degree of provocation.’ I could see myself losing everything — my job, the respect of my colleagues, my reputation.
Though half resigned to the hearing going ahead, I did make two more attempts to prevent it. First I tried to catch a word with Campbell in the playground, not to apologise to the little bastard but to show concern for his welfare. ‘Not talking to you, sir,’ he said, rushing past. I also went to see Mrs Baynes: could we not come up with a compromise that would avoid the case being referred to the governors?
‘It’s good of you to offer,’ she said, ‘but even if you do resign the hear
ing will have to go ahead.’
‘I wasn’t offering to resign.’
‘Oh — what are you offering?’
‘I’m thinking of the good name of the school,’ I said.
‘So are the governors,’ Mrs Baynes said. ‘A disciplinary hearing will reassure the parents that physical abuse of children is not tolerated here.’
‘But I didn’t abuse Campbell. All I did was hold his ear.’
‘That’s for the governors to decide. I’m sure they’ll deal with it fairly.’
‘When the only witnesses were kids? Who’re all too afraid of Campbell to tell the truth?’
‘In a situation like this, children are essentially truthful. Anyway, there was one adult witness. Me. I saw the state Campbell was in when you brought him to my room.’
‘You know there was nothing much wrong with him then.’
‘I’ll report the truth as I saw it, Ian.’
That’s where the case stood when we broke up for summer. Had the incident taken place a week or two earlier, there might have been time to settle it before the end of term. But the governors’ next meeting, of which the disciplinary hearing would form part, was scheduled for early September, the day before school resumed.
Now September had almost arrived. The hearing was next Wednesday.
No wonder I couldn’t sleep. And yet I must have slept, because when I opened my eyes again — sprung them from my dream’s dark loop — the yellow circle had risen behind the gingham and the beam through the curtain crack was brighter. I felt rested, and calmer than I had for weeks, as if the dancing dust motes were celebrating my release. Ollie’s news had put my problems in perspective: I had my health at least. Even the bet we’d made last night seemed less than threatening.
I threw some clothes on and slipped from the room without disturbing Em. The stairs were steeply raked and carpetless, but I negotiated them noiselessly, conscious that Daisy was sleeping just along the landing. Ollie, I assumed, would be fussing round the kitchen, kettle boiled, draining board cleared and radio tuned to the morning news — he’d always been an early riser. But the door was on its latch and when I entered there was only Rufus, paddling his tail with pleasure to see me. I let him out, made myself tea and sat on the terrace. The tea tasted odd — I’m used to tea bags, not the real thing — but I was grateful for the moisture. I closed my eyes and let the sun flood them. Ollie’s absence was surprising but a relief.
The Last Weekend Page 9